LinkedIn login details stolen in 2012 now being circulated and used - May 2016

Sage with potential security breach - August 2016

Yahoo security breach with account details stolen - September 2016

Tesco Bank with up to 40,000 accounts raided - November 2016

Wanna ransomeware affecting 200,000 users - May 2017

British Airways - total system failure due to power issues (?) - 26th/27th/28th May 2017

Wannacry ransomeware - companies held to ransom - June 2017

Petya virus - destroying data all around the world - June 2017

Spectre and Meltdown CPU bug - Jan 2018

National Lottery - asking 10.5 million users to change passwords due to usernames/passwords being stolen from another undisclosed website - Mar 2018

These are the tip of the iceberg. Most of these organisations have huge budgets for I.T. and the logic must be that if they are getting it wrong then you can as well. Where are the fallback systems? How can British Airways be down for three days due to a 'power failure'?

Consider this, if you let confidential information out which concerns your customers then you may be committing an act that is punishable by a fine from the Information Commissioner. It is cheaper to get it right in the first place. If you store your customer and invoicing data online and you get hacked then you are fully responsible for its confidentiality. A failure to maintain this information confidential could be very costly to yourself even if the data is being stored on a third party system. GDPR is looming and non-compliance is potentially bad for your finances.

To protect yourself to a high level on a Windows platform we recommend the use of :-

Windows 10 Professional EditionKaspersky Internet Security 2018MalwareBytes Premium EditionBelarc Advisor (to tell you what is out of date and missing)